UCS Puts the User Management of Office 365 and Google Apps for Work Back in Your Hands

Companies Regain Freedom of Choice in Microsoft’s and Google’s Cloud Worlds

Microsoft and Google are quickly developing into the top dogs of the office cloud scene, and companies are increasingly finding themselves faced with an uncomfortable problem: Namely, loss of control and freedom of choice. With its brand-new interfaces to Office 365 and Google Apps for Work, Univention Corporate Server (UCS), developed by the Bremen-based software vendor Univention, is now giving its customers back the freedom to choose for themselves as it puts the centralized user management for all the solutions implemented in your company back under your control – whether you’re a start-up working solely the cloud or an organization with its own IT department.

How Cloud Service Providers Can Offer Integrated Applications with Real Value for Enterprises

Open-Cloud-Alliance

In this post, I want to help answering the question how cloud and managed service providers can help end user organizations to move faster and more decisively into the cloud. This is of major relevance for the growth of all CSPs and MSPs and a requirement for every provider who wants to be able to compete against the large players like Amazon and Microsoft.

Why bother?

The first question of cause is: Do organizations want to move into the cloud at all? Especially with their internal applications like collaboration software or ERP systems? And as a consequence: Is there an opportunity for service providers at all?

The White House Shows How Open Source Works

Open Source Initiative LogoChoosing Open Source gets you more – a whole lot more. That is especially true for the state, which gains flexibility, independence, added security, and, above all, better synergies within and between different state organizations by actively giving preference to and promoting the use of Open Source software. This avoids double expenditure and counters the risk of incompatibilities; Open Source effectively renders the state more efficient.

Project Management Software OpenProject in App Center

OpenProject LogoThe well-known project management solution OpenProject is now available via the Univention App Center. The application offers a powerful feature set that enables project teams to efficiently plan, steer and communicate within projects: such as:

  • Administration of, e.g., tasks, requirements, bugs, risks, milestones, and project phases
  • Creation of project and time lines
  • Roadmap planning
  • Scrum and Agile
  • Time and cost reporting
  • Creation and maintenance of wikis
  • Document management

What Does it Imply for Support if a Vendor Moves from On-premise to Cloud-based Products?

As many software companies move their products to cloud-based offerings, the question comes up: where is the difference between supporting cloud-based products and supporting on-premise products? Talking to customers and partners over the last couple of months I’ve made some notices which I want to share with you.

Samba in UCS for the Provision of Microsoft Windows Services

Univention Corporate Server Logo

Through the integration of the software Samba in Univention Corporate Server we provide you with Microsoft Windows Services.

In this video we like to explain you the basic concept behind the software Samba in UCS and present you two of the most widely used UCS extensions. These are the Microsoft Active Directory compatible domain controller and the Windows compatible member server.

m23 Software Distribution for Linux Clients New in the App Center

Our App Center now offers m23, a browser-based software distribution solution for Linux clients. Using m23 you can easily roll out software on your Linux clients and manage them. No matter whether you have to manage only a few clients and servers or a large number.

For installing and managing your Linux clients you can choose from many auto-configured desktop environments and thousands of software packages such as Office, graphic tools, and server applications.

Further functions of m23 are, among others:

Security Update for “Badlock” for Samba-Software in UCS published

The critical security gap known under the name “Badlock“, which had been discovered by Samba developers within the Samba software but also within Windows, also concerns the Samba software integrated in UCS.

We are happy to now provide you with an erratum update for all UCS versions that are in maintenance. Please update your UCS installation for this using one of the three following procedures:

UCS 4.0-5 release provides a wide range of improvements and security updates

With Univention Corporate Server 4.0-5 Univention publishes the fifth point release of UCS 4.0. Thanks to an update of the Linux kernel to 3.16.7-ckt20 this version includes various stability and security updates. In addition, the standard integration of a Nagios plug-in monitors the synchronization between OpenLDAP and Samba 4. Further, diverse updates as to scope of function and performance were carried out in the areas of directory service replication, mail server, proxy server and the synchronization of printer GPO objects.